Taste of the Dead
by Swordage
Summary: Heartless have no mouths, for they eat with their claws and taste with their fingers. Warnings for metaphysical weirdness. AnsemRikuHeartless. Kinda.


The darkness slides around him as he falls, and it feels like fish-slime on his skin. His hand, still outstretched and inviting, brushes against something velvety-soft and strangely warm. He smiles and stretches a little, baring his stomach, and a thin finger strokes delicately around his navel. He is not afraid, although his eyes see nothing and his ears hear nothing and he is slowly falling away from all he's known.

There is a soft touch grasping his ankle, so gentle, and he arches back a little into the dark, a shiver trembling up his spine. _Yes,_ he thinks, _Show me everything,_ and then abruptly there are little clawed hands catching at his hair and cold metal-clad fingers grasp his waist and they are taking him apart. He feels, distantly, his pulse pounding through every cell of his body, the bits of it grinding against his arteries and veins and capillaries and he thinks it might hurt to be so alive. But it's alright, because those warm velvet fingers are sliding between his ribs, caressing his lungs, and he can feel a bit of fur against the arch of his pelvis, and those childlike claws are reaching through his ears and oh god touching his _brain._

It feels like nothing he's ever experienced, or perhaps it's everything he's ever experienced. His body shudders around their hands, arching and twisting, and he can hear them now - they chitter and murmur and growl low and thunderously, and if he just knew the words, if he could just hear them more clearly, he knows he would find his answers in their speech.

He is lost in their sound, feeling it wash over him in waves like his pulse, and their touches are everywhere on him and in him and he can feel a finger stroke his teeth through his cheek. He whimpers (or thinks he whimpers somewhere in this sea of noise) and his back arches as something runs down down down his spine, dipping between each vertebrae and ending between his legs at the tip of his tailbone. He reaches out blindly, grasping, and catches only the slick surface that he remembers from an eternity ago, that pulled him down and away and cradles him as he falls. There's more, he knows, something he's missing, and he almost begins to struggle against them to find it.

Then there is a warm wet touch on his cheekbone, and he stops with a shudder. It seems strange and wrong, and he wonders what being has hands like this before realizing it's a tongue, a human tongue - and it slides up into his eye socket and he gasps as it flicks against the nerve at the back and his eyelids flutter closed and still it strokes, so gently, rasping soft and moist and he can't stop moving now, thrashing mindlessly at the pleasure of it. He barely notices the wide, calloused hand sinking into his chest until it strokes against his heart and his pulse thunders through his veins loud enough to drown out the noise of the creatures that still slip their touches between his bones, and he can hear the eternal boom of the sea within himself. He is not afraid, even when the hand gently squeezes in time with his heartbeat, even when the tongue in his eye touches his nerves rhythmically, even when everything suddenly seems to move like the ocean and he is falling still, he can almost see the worlds sliding by just beyond his reach, and he stretches out to put his hand past the mass of soft warm bodies that envelop him, and suddenly there is ground beneath his feet and the hands reluctantly pull away - except for the stroking of his heart and the kiss in his eye. He shivers, realizing he is wet from head to toe in sweat, and a deep chuckle rumbles through his violated bones.

_Welcome,_ a voice says wordlessly._ Well come._ Riku blushes, although not sure why, and tilts his head back. The tongue leaves his eye and he cries out at the loss, and it returns to brush his lips and teeth and he can taste his own mind on it. He opens his eyes, realizing they were closed, and sees white hair and dark skin and bright eyes. He smiles, and reaches out, and then the other steps away and lets go his heart. Riku chokes quietly, and squeezes his eyes shut, and when he opens them he is alone.

He looks and he sees the darkness and he listens and hears the darkness and he reaches and feels the darkness and he is not afraid.


End file.
